about how HIV/AIDS was getting really bad over there.

I was never aware of the size of the HIV/AIDS infection in Russia. I remember TV commercials, greyscale and quietly dramatic, warning against getting infected. There were never stats presented, nor was there ever a conversation - in school, with parents or among peers.

Dirty needles was a problem when I was growing up. I've never witnessed people using, but I'd seen a lot of empty syringes around. I could find one a day just by going to school and back, which took five minutes. My mother would always caution me against picking them up.

It never connected with HIV/AIDS in my head, but I reckon now they had something to do with each other.

But supposedly (and you may be able to confirm this), part of the reason it was spreading so much was that it was still seen as a "gay" disease, and so people just wouldn't deal with it.

Can't confirm or deny it, but I wouldn't be surprised to hear someone in Russia say that. The main HIV/AIDS conversation was around heterosexual relationships. The commercials would always portray young men and women; never two men or two women.

Homosexuality is not even a conversation in the mainstream, mostly because it's led by bullheaded, narrow-minded old wheezers whose views would be welcome in the Republican Party of the US. Young men still stay away from the subject because of the same macho bullshit, but it's hereditary rather than self-assumed. Young women? I'm not sure they'd mind it so much. At least gay men make for decent male friends - something young women nowadays lack dramatically.

is голубой still used as a slang (and not very nice, as I understand it) word for gay people?

It's been a while since I've heard the term, but that's probably because I don't hang out with bigots. If you say it today, people will understand you.